Mark 12:28-44 - Giving It All To Our Triune God

Welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. We are walking through the last week of Jesus' life.

And in yesterday's episode, we saw Jesus come out swinging, and a showdown between Him and the religious leaders of the day. We saw Him interact with the chief priests. We saw Him interact with the Pharisees, with the Herodians, with the Sadducees.

And today, we are coming to His interactions with one of the scribes. These would be the, sometimes called the lawyers. These were the ones that knew the law of Moses, the law of God, somewhat of the best of everyone in Israel.

And all the way through as Jesus has been interacting with these individuals, they've been trying to entrap Jesus.

They've been trying to do kind of the gotcha questions, the tricky things, and Jesus has dismantled all of their questions and given answers that show His infinite wisdom as God Almighty.

And verse number 28, we read one of the scribes approached when He heard them debating and saw that Jesus answered them well. He asked Him, which command is the most important of all?

Jesus answered, the most important is listen, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. That would be the Shema.

That would be the thing that Israelites would say basically every single day would have been one of the things that you would have learned from childhood. So he says, listen, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other command greater than these.

Then the scribe said to him, you are right, teacher. You have correctly said that he is one and there is no one else except him.

And to love him with all your heart and with all your understanding and with all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself is far more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.

When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, you are not far from the kingdom of God and no one dared to question him any longer. Here, I want to pause for a second and look at these kind of primary commands.

If Jesus says this is the most important part of the Old Testament, then we should probably study it and look at it. OK, here, the most important part of the commandment first starts with who God is. It says the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

That we do not serve a plurality of gods, we don't serve a pantheon, we don't serve perhaps just some demigods and maybe have ultimate allegiance to a senior god. No, no, no. We serve one God, one Lord.

And of course, entering into that is the difficulty of the Trinity that I'm thankful for the song Holy, Holy, Holy that has taught many of us from childhood how to express who God is. God...

Here, one second, I'm trying to remember the specific line I was thinking of. God in three persons, blessed Trinity is that particular line. That they are not three gods.

They are not three aspects of one God. They are three persons, but the same in essence. That they are the same type of thing.

They aren't three fundamentally different things. But our God is Father and Son and Spirit. The Father is not the Son.

The Son is not the Spirit. The Spirit is not the Father. They are co-equal in glory, in importance, in worship to be given to them.

It is not that the Holy Spirit is a lesser God than Jesus, who is a lesser God than the Father. They are all one. And many people have tried to give maybe some illustrations of, okay, how do we kind of wrap our mind around that?

How do we think about it? And people have given some somewhat flawed things over the years. There's the classic tale told of St.

Patrick and him looking at a three leaf clover and showing it and saying, okay, you know, all of this is a clover, but each of these clover leaves are different.

And obviously, there's an issue with that in that each of those leaves of the clover are part of the one clover and that Jesus isn't like part of God. He is God, wholesale.

Some people have looked at it with, say, an egg, that an egg has the outer shell and it has the yolk and it has whatever the other portion of an egg is. And that falls flat, too. I think there's a phrase for it, modalism.

And I'll actually link in the description for this episode.

There's a really funny video that someone put out a few years ago about the Trinity, which basically just ends up saying the exact same phrase that Christians have said for over a millennia, what's called often the Nicene Creed that says, hey, here's

the orthodox way that we believe the Trinity to be expressed. This is everything that we have to say based on what God's Word has said about the topic. So I say all of that.

The Trinity is a huge mystery, but we believe it and we hold to it and we hold to it because Jesus, even in His prescription for our baptisms, says that we are to be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

When we think about Romans chapter 8, that over and over and over again we're reminded, okay, when we pray, the Spirit takes our prayers.

He brings it to the Father as it ought to be said, and the Son is standing behind the Father giving His authority or saying, yes, you can answer their prayers.

You can forgive their sins because they belong to Me, because I have paid the price for them, that there is such incredible mystery and unity, that the Trinity doesn't have varying wills.

It's not that Jesus wants one thing and He's working for one goal, and the Father doesn't want that thing, and He's trying to do His own thing, and the Spirit's off doing His own thing. No, no, no.

They are working together for the same goal, that when we know that Jesus loves us, we also know the Father loves us, and we also know the Spirit loves us.

We know that the Spirit helps us in our prayers, and that the Father delights to answer our prayers, and the Son gives us the right to have our prayers heard.

When we think about the Church, that the Father planned it, the Son bought it and is the bridegroom of the Church, and the Holy Spirit is the one that indwells the Church, that baptizes us into Christ's body.

He is the one that makes us all one and connected through the Holy Spirit.

I think of Jesus' prayer right after the Last Supper, that His prayer to the Father was that His people would be one, that they would be unified even as the Trinity is unified.

So, just a great, amazing mystery that I would encourage you, like, spend time.

When you're reading in God's Word, notice how many times, especially in the New Testament, that it's highlighted of, yes, the Father did this, and the Spirit did this, and the Son did this, that they are working together for our good and for their

glory. And so all praise belongs to the Trinity. So, he says that. Then he goes into, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.

Okay, here's the greatest commandment. This is the God that we worship. And he says we are to love him with all of our heart, all of our innermost being and affections.

He is deserving of all of it. He's not just worthy of you doing actions. He's worthy of you doing them from your innermost being.

That you want to worship him. You want to praise him. You want to tell other people about him.

You want to pray to him. You want to follow in his righteous commands for your life. That we are to do it from our innermost here with all your soul.

That is, with all of your animating features. The things that make you, you. If you are one that really, really loves sports.

Like love God through your hobbies. Love God through if you're just really about your family. Love God through how you interact with your family.

The words that you say to them. The activities you encourage them to participate in. Love God through who you are.

Not just your innermost being, but in all of the things that make you you. Love him through that. Love him with your mind.

Love him with your thoughts. Love him with the plans that you make. Love him with what you meditate on.

What you choose to think about and to mull over. Love him in your mind. And love him in your strength, with your actions, with the strength of your mouth.

What you say. Let all of it. Love the Lord.

And then verse 31, the second greatest commandment is love your neighbor as yourself. All of us care for our bodies and ourselves in some way each and every day that we put clothes on. Lord willing, we maintain some hygiene.

We give ourselves a roof over our head. We give ourselves food to eat. We do things that we delight and take joy in.

We might get ourselves a coffee or tea or crab cake or something. And God says, love your neighbor as yourself.

That is, God gives you the opportunity to do good for others, to speak kindness into others' lives, to warn them about when they're headed for disaster, that we would do all of it out of love for them.

That it wouldn't just be, hey, this person is inconveniencing me, and so I'm going to interact with them. No, no, no, love them. Have a care for others.

He says, there is no other commandment greater than these. And as the scribe says, yep, like you're right about all of it. And he says, and to love your neighbor as yourself is far more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.

This would be looking back at Psalm 51, when David said the same exact thing. He says, you don't desire like sacrifices of bulls or goats or lambs. Otherwise, I would give that to you.

He says, the sacrifices of God are a broken and a contrite, a humble heart. He says, that kind of sacrifice, God, you will not despise.

And as you look at the prophets in the Old Testament that over and over again, they're like, okay, you people are bringing sacrifices to God, but it's not because you're sorry for your sin. Like you, it's not coming with repentance.

You're just doing it because you think that it will gain you enough favor with God that God won't judge you, but then you're going to go right back to it.

It's kind of how some people have treated the act of confession in the Catholic Church, that maybe they might confess the sin, but there's no repentance from that sin.

And so here, this scribe realized that when Jesus was saying, this love of God is the most important commandment, and the love of neighbor comes with that, because how can you really say you love God if you don't love your neighbor?

That's what the book of 1 John tells us over and over again, that he realizes, yes, this relationship and love of God and of people, this is far more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.

And this is what Jesus did, that in his love for his father, in the obedience to the plan set out from all the ages past, he went to the cross and his love for people made it so that he was the offering, the sacrifice for sin that we truly needed, so

that no longer do we have to offer burnt offerings and sacrifices, but instead we can give ourselves to the Lord. And man, when Jesus hears that from this scribe, when he hears that statement of, oh yeah, like it is about a relationship with God and

with people, he answers the scribe, he says, you are not far from the kingdom of God, that it's not about religious ritual, it's about worship, it's about fellowship, it's about community, it's about love. That's what it all boils down to.

I love, there's a song by Danny Gokey called Love God and Love People. And I think the chorus goes, gotta keep it real simple, bring it back to ground zero, because it all comes down to this, love God and love people.

We're living in a world that needs saving, and if we're gonna find a way to change it, it all comes down to this, love God and love people. And really, really love that central truth. Then I love the very end of verse 34.

It says, And no one dared to question him any longer.

That even though the chief priest had asked him questions, the Pharisees, the Herodians, the Sadducees, here a scribe, everyone's asking him, and they realize, yeah, we're not going to outwit this teacher. But then Jesus has a question for them.

In verse 35, while Jesus was teaching in the temple, he asked, how can the scribes say that the Messiah is the son of David?

David himself says by the Holy Spirit, the Lord declared to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet. David himself calls him Lord. How then can he be his son?

And the large crowd was listening to him with delight. Here quoting from Psalm 110, what he said there, it has basically, Yahweh declared to my Adonai. So Lord, we would know as Yahweh, and then another version of Lord would be Adonai.

This would be Master versus kind of that lower case, or sorry, all caps L-O-R-D that you would often see. The other name people have mentioned for it is Jehovah, Yahweh, Lord. I am, so it says Yahweh.

I am said to Adonai, my Master, my Lord, sit at my right hand till I put your enemies under your feet. Jesus here is saying, hey, I am the Messiah, and the Messiah is God. He says the son of David is also the son of God.

It's why David says that he is his Adonai, his Lord, his Master. So here he's telling them this.

In one of the other gospels, there's silence then from the Pharisees and the scribes and all of them, because they can't explain it, even though Jesus is very clearly saying, you guys have completely missed who I am. I am the son of God.

I am the son of David. I am the son of man from Daniel 7. He's making it very, very clear.

Don't misunderstand who I am. I'm not just a good prophet. I'm not just a rabble rouser.

I am God. Verse number 38. He also said in his teaching, beware of the scribes who want to go around in long robes and who want greetings in the market places, the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets.

They devour widow's houses and say long prayers just for show. These will receive harsher judgment. He says, don't go around looking for accolades.

Don't go around wanting people to know who you are. Don't go around looking for the best seat you can get at a table or a party. Don't go looking for the best seats in church.

He says, don't just pray long prayers so that people will hear you. He says, genuinely worship and love God, and that will result in you loving people. And here he says, how they are treating the commandments that they are telling to even widows.

It is wasting away all of the limited funds that widows have. And he says, they are taking advantage of widows. He says, they're going to receive judgment.

And then he gives kind of an application of, that's not who you all should follow and mimic. Here's who you should. Verse 41, sitting across from the temple treasury, he watched how the crowd dropped money into the treasury.

Many rich people were putting in large sums. Then a poor widow came and dropped in two tiny coins worth very little.

Summoning his disciples, he said to them, truly I tell you, this poor widow, the one who threw in a couple pennies, has put more into the treasury than all the others, for they all gave out of their surplus.

But she, out of her poverty, has put in everything she had, all she had to live on. And man, I think as we look at loving God, loving people, not just doing things for show, that this is a great place to end today.

That this woman, she didn't give because she had some extra stuff to give to God. She gave the last, everything that she had, she gave it to the Lord. Today, do you just give to God or give to God's work when it's convenient?

Or do you give with abandon? Do you give with a heart that says, I love God, and so I'm going to sacrifice for him? And that might look different for you.

God is not commanded. Everyone needs to give the last of everything that they have. But is there anything that you're telling God, this is kind of off limits from you.

I'm going to keep this. Back in the Old Testament, there was the tithe, that 10% that people gave. While in the New Testament, that's not reiterated as a command for everyone to do, frankly in my life, I have found great joy.

And when I give, God is always taking care of my needs.

This past month, there's been just bonus, not financial bonus, bonus things that I have to pay for, that I wasn't planning on paying for, thing after thing after thing that I'm like, oh Lord, you know I don't have a lot of money, and this is just

really stacking up, and God has made it time and time again, where he's provided for my needs. And I won't say, hey, if you tithe, God will always provide for your every need financially. I can't promise that. I know God has promised that.

God will provide for all of our needs according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. But I have found that God is faithful, and that if you are wondering on, should I give financially? Can I give financially?

I just want to encourage you, like, God will take care of you. I've seen it over and over and over again in my life. And if there was anyone that maybe could get like a pass on giving to the church, I would think it would probably be the pastor.

But I can tell you, I can testify that I've seen God work and provide for my needs again and again and again. You can trust him. Because he loves you and he calls you to love him, to love people.

He is God incarnate. Don't look for accolades. Don't look for how you can get people to praise you.

Instead, determine, I'm going to give God everything that I am. What he asks of me, I will give, and I will love him and love others. Thanks for tuning in today.

See you next episode.